The Aging Image Of Labor

No Reflection Of Rank And File

SAN FRANCISCO — They were a nurse, a carpenter, a teacher, an electrician, a truck driver and a computer technician.

They were young and eager-looking. They were white, African-American, Latino and Asian. They were male and female.

They could not be ignored by the hundreds of labor leaders and delegates who gathered in San Francisco last week for the AFL-CIO's biannual convention.

But when the delegates lowered their gaze, they saw a different view of organized labor than that in the colorful, giant-size portraits of the six workers in the middle of the meeting room.

They saw the house of labor's leaders, the 35-member AFL-CIO Executive Council. Most of them were elderly, gray-haired white men, and one of them dozed occasionally in a back row. There were just three African-Americans. And three women, one of whom was also the only Latino.

To some convention newcomers and younger delegates, the image summed up one of organized labor's problems at a time when it is struggling to stop its steep membership losses. Big labor's leaders, it is said, no longer reflect the rank and file: They are too old, too white, too male and too entrenched in their power.

This is a real issue within organized labor's ranks. And yet it is debated largely in private because of the sense that unions are under siege, and such debates, it is advised, are best kept within labor's family.

The debate goes this way:

Just focusing on the AFL-CIO's leaders is wrong. It does not take into account what is taking place in state and local ranks, say union leaders and labor experts.

At these levels there are, in fact, far more women and minorities in leadership positions, said Darryl Holter, coordinator of labor programs at UCLA's Institute of Industrial Relations.

And it is only a matter of time, say Holter and others, until the current leadership passes on and these middle-level leaders step up. (Similar arguments are made by the top executives of corporate America.)

When they do step up, however, it is not clear what the condition of the unions they inherit will be.

The AFL-CIO has lost several hundred thousand members in recent years. And unions have bargained for deals that favored the current work force and retired workers at the expense of broadening the membership or protecting new members.

Next, there is the issue of the current leaders' age. Attacking the AFL-CIO's leaders for their age and seniority is age discrimination, say union veterans.

Furthermore, unions are not companies, where executives are shed in bad times, but political organizations with social agendas, say longtime union officials.

Sweep aside this generation of leadership, which set down the unions' goals, the argument goes, and you lose a connection with the unions' history.

"It (age) is a fake issue," snapped Jack Golodner, director of the AFL-CIO's Department for Professional Employees, which represents white-collar workers.

"At what point do you get old? I'm 60," added Golodner, whose division now accounts for about half of the AFL-CIO's 13.3 million members. By the end of the decade, white-collar workers are expected to dominate organized labor's ranks, he said.

The real question, suggested a veteran union official, who asked not to be identified, is not age but whether the unions' leaders are really committed to "innovations."

"Far too often the labor movement stifles creativity and encourages conformity," he said. "There are too many people who are unwilling to take risks and lose their jobs."

The reply from union officials leading new operations, or from women and minorities, is that changes are underway within organized labor, though they were slow to arrive and are not always given maximum support.

"Rather than talking the unions into hiring our staff, we have to recruit to meet the demand," said Richard Bensinger, head of the AFL-CIO's three-year-old Organizing Institute.

Operating like a Peace Corps for the unions, the institute was set up to train and nourish a group of young, idealistic organizers.

Its central approach is a break with some unions' tradition of strictly hiring organizers from among their own ranks. So far, it has trained about 200 organizers, said Bensinger.

One of the ways the United Food and Commercial Workers union has grown, said Beth Shulman, a vice president of the union and one of two women on its 11-member executive board, is to find organizers who reflect its new members.

Two out of three of the new members of the nearly 1-million-member union are women or minorities, and most of them are in the health-care or food industries, she said.

"There is a realization that we have to reflect the work force and have the people who do that," said Shulman, an attorney, who also heads the union's division for professional workers.

Rather than strike, some unions have begun to wage publicity campaigns aimed at businesses' clients, local communities or stockholders to get the same results as a work stoppage.

Jon Barton is an organizer for the Service Employees International Union in San Jose, who knows about successful and innovative membership drives.

His union has signed up 2,000 mostly Latino janitors in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area in the last two years, a feat some union leaders had considered impossible.

The 33-year-old Barton, who wears a well-trimmed beard and dresses in jeans and an open-collar sport shirt, is also one of those impatient with organized labor's promises.

"The union movement isn't moving fast enough to organize, period," he said one day last week in the downtown hotel where labor's leaders were meeting. "We need more women and Latino and Asian organizers. There are bright spots, but the bright spots are few."